Firstly what is a Basic Universal Income?

BASIC UNIVERSAL INCOME: Basically everyone in a country will receive state funded “wages” with everyone receiving the same amount of money each month in addition to any other form of income received from other avenues.

Elon Musk of Tesla Motors and the hyperloop amongst other really cool things, thinks we’ll eventually need a basic universal income because of “automation.” Automation being the theory that eventually all of our jobs will be taken up by Robots, leading to a loss of jobs for humans. How would human’s live without jobs? This is where Elon’s theory of Basic Universal Income (by way of Robots and job loss) comes into play.

There are a lot of benefits to a basic universal income. Speaking to CNBC Elon states that we will have a lot more time to do more “complex things and more interesting things” One of the most notable benefits being a lot more leisure time! (Plus it allows us to show you more ways to kill time!) But Elon did send out a small warning to anyone thinking that we are about to lose our jobs to those pesky robots, he states that we have got to “Figure out how we integrate with a world and a future with vast A.I….. there has to be some improved symbiosis with digital super intelligence,” He’s not wrong! We’ve seen Terminator! 

However on the flip side there is an incredible amount of benefits to the idea of basic universal income, everyone would essentially receive enough income to survive without working and we’d all live happier lives due to the less stress that we would be under. Plus the threat of homelessness and poverty levels would decrease causing an increase in the health of a countries economy.

So maybe robots taking our jobs aren’t such a bad thing after all……..

Click here to here the guys talking about basic universal income on the show!